


Boxing Lessons

by rosesscythes



Category: RWBY
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-13
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-08-01 16:04:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16287626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosesscythes/pseuds/rosesscythes
Summary: Ruby asked Yang for boxing lessons. They get more than they bargained for.





	Boxing Lessons

**Author's Note:**

> This is set between Volume 2 and 3, and is a commission for @octopodian on tumblr!

The first punch practically sent Ruby flying. To be fair, that was still better than she would have expected, which entailed ‘sending her through a wall’, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t a hell of a surprise.

Picking herself up off the ground, she groaned in pain. “Yang, when I asked you to teach me how to throw a punch, this isn’t exactly what I was thinking.” She shook her head in a vain attempt to get the pain to go away, looking like a dog trying to shake water off of itself after a nice swim. 

Yang, for her part, stood laughing with her boxing glove-clad hands resting on her hips, hair tied up in a ponytail. “Hey, you asked to train with the master, you get the master course.” She took a fighting stance again. 

“I was just expecting a bag and you showing me what to do,” Ruby grumbled as she too put her hands up, imitating Yang’s stance, albeit poorly. 

“You’ve gotta learn to throw combos, Sis,” Yang replied, beginning to circle around Ruby. Her sister followed in the opposite direction, keeping their eyes on each other. “You don’t have the raw power I do.” She immediately sprung forward with a mean right hook, sending Ruby flying back again. “See that? You can’t do that.”

Ruby shook herself off and stood up again. “I totally can! If you’d let me get a hit on you!”

Yang smirked and dropped her guard. “Alright. Show me, sis.” 

Ruby hesitated. This could be a trap, get her to throw a punch and immediately get slammed in the stomach. Yang was good at that sort of treachery when it came to fistfights. Just to counter her point, her sister stuck her chin out and closed her eyes, almost just to taunt her. Unlike Ruby, Yang was without padding besides her gloves. Ruby hesitated, then lashed out. Her punch landed square in Yang’s face...and totally failed to even push her back or make her flinch. Just as the surprise registered, Yang’s arm snapped out with an uppercut, knocking Ruby on her bottom once more with stars in her eyes.

“See? Told you.” Yang took a fighting stance once more. “Try and hit me twice in a row now.”

Ruby got up and actively growled, taking her own stance. Circling each other once more, they took a second before Ruby lashed out again. Her first punch was a weak jab that thudded squarely against Yang’s blocking arms. However, as Yang immediately went for a much stronger jab in response, Ruby lashed out with a right uppercut to Yang’s gut. Both punches landed, though while Ruby’s punch only made Yang wheeze for a second, Ruby got pushed back a good few foot. At the very least, however, she managed to keep standing this time.

“Well, that was an improvement,” Yang nodded. “Good shot, sis. Keep it up.”

That was how they practiced for the next hour or so. Yang and Ruby would circle each other, arms up, until Ruby inevitably jumped out to hit Yang. She’d get maybe a shot or two in before getting blown backwards by a fierce punch from her sister. But as they kept going, Ruby began adapting. She started by throwing a jab, sidestepping, then throwing another jab. When Yang went for a hook, Ruby would try and respond as quickly as she could with two punches before getting knocked back. Ruby would duck sometimes, allowing the momentum to carry her into an uppercut. 

Towards the end of the hour,  both combatants were sore, worn out, bruised, and battered, colored in black and purple like they were two sibling blueberries. Ruby herself had a severe black eye. As such, she decided that instead of trying to duck or sidestep or dodge in any way, she’d actually try to block one of Yang’s punches, in the same way Yang had been doing to her own.

She threw a right hook, and Yang blocked. Ruby followed it with a jab, and then rather than go for another punch, she held her arms up and stood her ground.

What the two of them hadn’t noticed was that for all the time Ruby spent getting better at taking punches and giving them back, Yang had been taking sequentially more damage. And with no aura meters on display, they had no idea of how truly damaged they were. And so, with Ruby’s last jab, in conjunction with her black eye, she hadn’t noticed the telltale shimmer that she’d broken through Yang’s aura. And of course, breaking through Yang’s aura had only one result.

Her semblance was activated.

Yang’s next punch hit Ruby’s arms hard. It was a power shot, the kind often seen in movies and tv shows that had little use except for finishing a fight. If Ruby didn’t still have one last ounce of her aura left, she surely would’ve had them broken. As it was, she got smacked straight through the wall, blowing through it like a cannonball. A second before she impacted, one thought went through Ruby’s mind.

_ Gee, I thought this would’ve happened sooner. _

All Yang could see at first was the dust of the wall being shattered like so much glass. Over time, her vision cleared, and she noticed tons of rose petals falling through the air, with no Ruby in sight. 

“Oh my god,” Yang said to herself, in shock at the petals. “I just disintegrated my sister.” She stood there in utter shock for a few moments.

She did not notice the petals slowly being drawn towards the center of the room for a few more moments. But one by one, they drifted closer to one point, faster and faster until a stream formed, causing Yang’s head to snap towards that point. She watched as they slowly coalesced into a small whirlwind, before that in turn died down to reveal a fully-intact, healed Ruby, who blinked slowly at her.

A beat passed. Then, at the same time, the sisters shouted “THAT WAS AWESOME!” 

Yang rushed over to her sister, inspecting her for damage. “What was that! I thought I blew you up!” 

Ruby shrugged. “I don’t know! It was like my semblance but I’ve always kept myself in a single stream when I do that! We should probably get out of here before someone notices we destroyed the wall!”

Yang nodded, then grabbed her sister’s hand and ran out, back towards the dorms. If they could master that technique, it’d certainly turn out useful in the Vytal festival.

Ruby, on her part, hadn’t learned that much about close-quarters combat. But this, plus some bonding time with her sister, was more than good enough.


End file.
